Game changes:- Monster bug fixed, no combat rollbacks when fighting identical monsters.- Advanced damage control is removed from tree for cyber races.- Initiative rule now takes BA differences below +10 into account.- Ships tied by initiative are now sorted by crew experience.- "Mark Block Stack Size Exceeded" crash in races screen fixed.- Ship captured by shuttles when rotating will not cause desync in network games.- Super-fast combat mode (Z) now takes ship explosions into account.- PD and Spatial range is now calculated correctly midflight.- Fixed discrepancy between targeting and damaging ranges for spherical weapons.- Stasis disables wide area jammer, warp dissipator, scout lab.- Ship under stasis now ceases to be affected by tractors and BHGs.- Ship under stasis now ceases to affect others by tractors, BHGs or stasis.- Fixed a number of bugs in defensive fire.- All retreats now happen after all ships have recharged weapons.- Repaired warp dissipator will now prevent retreats ordered on previous turn.- Missile alerts will now be triggered by inplace rotations.- Correct turn cost when missile alert is on and ship is hit while turning.- Ship with inertial nullifier does not pull missiles when rotating.- Fighters chasing missiles with depleted moves now will move at the end of turn.- Ordnance bonus now works for fighters.- Non-TWF ships now update at the end of TWF turn.- Non-TWF ships do not perform defensive fire in TWF turn.- Fixed bug which allowed to capture satellite sometimes.- Ship capture removes wait and done states.- Energy Absorber's stored damage won't overflow now.- Different cloaks now work correctly if put on a ship together.- Marines above ship capacity will now be spaced after ship capture.- Colonies with and without Barracks now have the same marines/armor limits.- The last (max) marine and armor units of a Subterranean colony will no longer die.- Corrected race pick costs sync when loading net game (1.50.2 bug).- Fixed broken cloaking device still being able to cloak (1.50.3 bug).- Fixed phasing cloak recloaking even with zero counter (1.50.3 bug).

This is going to sound really, really, really dumb, but I have never (gasp) played the dos version of the game! How do I play it on a win XP/sp3 computer?

You'd need to use DosBox. Rather than going through the pain of setting that up, you might consider just buying the GoG version for $4 which has dosbox already set up. Then you can install the patch easily. If you have the collector's edition of Moo4 then you already have access to the dos version of Moo2 through steam or gog.

You'd need to use DosBox. Rather than going through the pain of setting that up, you might consider just buying the GoG version for $4 which has dosbox already set up. Then you can install the patch easily. If you have the collector's edition of Moo4 then you already have access to the dos version of Moo2 through steam or gog.

Ok, I can go and re-install steam, and then DL the MoO2 that comes with it. OTOH, I don't want to have to keep steam installed just to play single player, offline games. Do you know if uninstalling steam will make playing the game impossible?

Further more, I believe that we must start building a better MoO5 now, for only by doing so can we get tomorrow's game, today!

In the Master of Orion 2 folder, find the "Launch Master of Orion 2" shortcut. Right click and click Properties.

In the Target field, replace the first section in quotes with the install path "C:\...\Master of Orion 2\DOSBOX\DOSBox.exe." The target window should look something like this depending on your install path: "C:\Users\Your Name\Games\Master of Orion 2\DOSBOX\DOSBox.exe" -conf "..\dosboxMOO2.conf" -conf "..\dosboxMOO2_single.conf" -noconsole -c exit

Now that shortcut should open the game without going through Steam. By the way, in the manual you will read about "command line switches." These are commands you can type at the end of the Target field of the shortcut. They are used to enable optional features that have been added, such as /skipintro, which automatically skips the intro cinematics.

In the Master of Orion 2 folder, find the "Launch Master of Orion 2" shortcut. Right click and click Properties.

In the Target field, replace the first section in quotes with the install path "C:\...\Master of Orion 2\DOSBOX\DOSBox.exe." The target window should look something like this depending on your install path: "C:\Users\Your Name\Games\Master of Orion 2\DOSBOX\DOSBox.exe" -conf "..\dosboxMOO2.conf" -conf "..\dosboxMOO2_single.conf" -noconsole -c exit

Now that shortcut should open the game without going through Steam. By the way, in the manual you will read about "command line switches." These are commands you can type at the end of the Target field of the shortcut. They are used to enable optional features that have been added, such as /skipintro, which automatically skips the intro cinematics.

Ok, so I did all this (I forgot that the CTS & steam were on the 7 pro laptop, not the XP), so I now have a desktop icon that starts dosbox.

Now what do I do to play the game? And if I want to copy over the MoO2 install from the 7 to the XP, will that work or no?

Keep in mind I have never before used dosbox.

Further more, I believe that we must start building a better MoO5 now, for only by doing so can we get tomorrow's game, today!